Photo order in sequence has changed after upload

Contributing and equipment 360° cameras
#1

Hooray, I did my first tour with a brand new action cam yesterday.

Type: GoPro Max
Software: v2.00
Setting: 360° Timelapse
Interval: 2 sec
Mount: camera on helmet, me on my bike

The sequence on Mapillary :
https://www.mapillary.com/map/im/FHT6V9FR6c2rJJpAIy9IQ7

Very frustrating to see that after upload on Mapillary platform, the photo order on the line has changed randomly from 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11… into 1-4-2-3-7-5-6-8-9-11-10 … And, when you normalize the sequence (set every image to look at the next one in the sequence) the driving direction sometimes turns around 180°. This happens all over the sequence.

The steps I took :

  • updated the camera’s software to v2.00 (in order to be able to make 360° timelapse photos) > as a result of the update the camera’s internal date was set to 2/04/2021, which I did not notice till after the survey
  • after the tour, I copied the spherefiles from SD to harddisk
  • removed the first and last photos (where you can see me climbing on and off my bike)
  • I did not change the date in EXIF
  • upload with Mapillary WebUploader

How to fix this?
Thanks, Bart

2 Likes
#2

I often experience the same symptoms.
From my experience, I know that the order in the sequence is sorted by the time data in EXIF.
The sort key is by no means the file name or the order in which it was uploaded. I have had enough experience to be sure that it must be sorted by the time data in EXIF.

If I shoot 5 shots per second, the order of 5 shots with the same second data would be catastrophically messy.
So I actively manipulate EXIF information.
Reluctantly, 900 5fps photos taken in 180 seconds are rewritten in a time field expanded to a time of about 2 hours with an interval of 5 seconds or more.
With that operation, I was able to arrange the photos in the order I intended.

Check the EXIF in your photo.
Is there any data that shows the time downloaded to your smartphone or computer instead of the shooting time (Interval: 2 sec)?
I’ve had trouble with detailed verification, so I’m rewriting all the time data to the same one with the intervals widened as above.
If you have the power, experiment to find out which of the multiple time fields determines the order of the Mapillary sequence.

#3

Give our uploader a try. We built it to solve problems like this, as we shoot exclusively with GoPro’s for Mapillary.

https://www.mapthepaths.com/uploader